The Dark Days

More rough times and more spectacular times! The best parents in the world sent me a care package with a lot of necessities, plus nutella and my favorite Oreo Cakesters! Talk about a treat! Since my willpower concerning sweets is very lacking…none of it lasted very long, but every morsel of those Golden Oreo Cakesters (proud of my product placement) was the best moment ever for my taste buds! They have gotten so accustomed to rice, kalamungay leaves, and tabios (black lentil like beans.) That is my lunch at school every single day. Something random and funny, before Gangnum Style went all on the rage here, it was “Teach Me How to Dougie.” If you do not know this song, it is a pretty explicit rap song; it is quite amusing to have it blasting cuss words during school presentations. Also weird, spider fighting is becoming a big problem at my school. Kids will bring them in matchboxes and make bets on who will kill the others. Speaking of, I saw a larger than tarantula creepy spider in our kitchen the other day, biggest one seen yet, my sisters screamed and ran away and I gagged a little, but it scampered off quickly.

A positive note, my Glee students are so amazing! They performed for the first time in front of Cathy and me last week. A group of 5 boys sang, “I’m Yours” acoustically with one drum, and it literally made me teary-eyed. Sooooo cute and good!  I got all of the performances on video, so be looking for them being posted soon! They must have spent a lot of time practicing since some of the groups actually created dance numbers along with their songs. I was so so proud, and I can’t wait for what is ahead for us! My plan is to create an original musical!!! I know this is rather ambitious, haha. I also really feel like I am making progress with my classes. I had a few overwhelming days when my co-teacher was absent with a toothache, so I had to take over her 4 classes, giving me 8 for the day with no breaks, and 3 of those are the grade 7 kids where there is no curriculum yet, so lesson plans have to be created from scratch. Stress overload which brought back my ear infection…but taking the good with the bad! There are also many other annoyances that come along with Cathy not being around, and the only 3 other English teachers don’t know what when there is a big event (like Education Week this week, where the English Dept. is in charge of planning an activity/challenge/celebration for every day next week), acting like nervous sheep without their shepherd, leaving me to do even more work and planning, but I don’t want to get into that now, we will see how next week goes.

The Trouble-Makers...

They are so cute and silly

Funny.

I had quite a terrifying experience the other night. I was walking into my little bathroom area and I look through my curtains and see a HUMAN HAND through the bars on my window. I think I yelled, “Hey, get out of here!” in the heat of the moment. I did not think too much about it, but boy was my heart beating fast! The scary thing is that the back if my hut is not fenced in and leads out to where there are a bunch of squatters who live on the beach. I am pretty sure that this midnight visitor was just a curious kiddo, but I was still spooked. About an hour later someone is throwing rocks at my wall, definielt kids, and I yell in Cebuano to go away or I will call the police and that got them out of here. I was hesitant to even tell my family because I have such a good set-up here (of course Daniel was furious at this when he told me to wake them up at that very moment when I called him after it happened), but my principal is already worried it is too dangerous. I told the fam the next day and my host dad installed more lights in the back (of course useless now that the electricity has been out all week, haha). Now people just yell “Hi Ate Allie” while they are walking down the street outside my hut. Ughhh, I really hate the lack of privacy, but not much I can do about it.

I had the best weekend with Daniel in Manila. Nutella and bread for breakfast, lazy movies, burritos, more tasty mangosteens and lansones, and even found new season of GLEE on the TV, sadly not impressed by it...I miss the innocent children. We also had a really cute skype date the week before where we fell asleep. GAG, I know, but it was so cute. In Manila, we ventured out to the GIANT Chinese market “Divisoria.” Major sensory overload in a good way, we only got lost in the labyrinth of it all a couple of times. The next night while just strolling about outside, we stumbled upon a surprise giant colored/music fountain bonanza. It was so random and fun, with lots of people and the fountain lights shot up, danced, and colors went along with the different songs played. The whole weekend went so well and much such a much needed escape for both of us. It felt so cool navigating all around Manila using Tagalog and taking jeepenys instead of taxis just like the locals! Saying goodbye is always hard, but we have another adventure coming up so coon for Christmas in Bohol with the Yoda-like tarsiers!

Entrance of Fancy ChinaTown Area

The Lovely and Magical Fountain

After all of that was the big typhoon that you all have heard about. Typhoon Pablo had a major temper tantrum and took out a bunch of our power posts, damaged classrooms and the beach/corals. No fun at all. So, we have been without power and water here for a week. Luckily, my host dad filled up our big water tank before the storm, so we are still using water from that. The first few days were fun with dinners by candlelight, playing cards, and having to be creative for fun…but now it is getting a little old. I feel very secluded and really don’t like having to do everything in the dark now, not to mention how sweltering hot the classrooms are with fans not working. School is back in session, but it is really hard to teach and learn in these circumstances.  I was very grateful that Daniel emailed my family to keep them in the loop, and that my host family here did so much to make me feel safe (even trying to get me to sleep on the floor in their house with the 20 other neighbors.) So as of today, December 9th, the Philippines President, Benigno Aquino III, has declared the Philippines being in a "State of Calamity" Yes, this actually exists, and what it means is that now local governments will be able to access funds for rescue, relief, and rehabilitation. The death toll is now at 540, with 1,100 injured, and 827 missing. The far worse affected areas have of course been the poorest regains, with flimsy houses that easily blew over and were completely destroyed, leaving the residents to fend for themselves in the flood waters. Most Filipinos, who I have met, do not know how to swim... A quarter of a million people are now homeless for Christmas and millions overall have been affected. It is a very sad situation, but people are now doing the best that they can to move on and recover. Enough of the sad facts now...

I had a pretty cool experience this weekend that really shows how much my family here feels like I am really a member of their family. They kind of kidnapped me to go to their other family members house up in the mountains for a fiesta that they were hosting. It was so beautiful and my host mom’s two brothers live there and live completely off of their own land, rarely going into the city, unless to use their roosters for cockfighting. Everyone kept telling me that day that I would be the one to kill the pig for the next day fiesta. They were serious, and I was seriously freaking out. Thank goodness once we got there, it had already been done and the blood made into tasty dinuguan and all the parts separated. However, I did have the pleasure to machete the pig skull open to scoop out the brains. There is a first for everything! We fired it all up the next day, and it was the best pork I have ever tasted! It was also pretty cute sleeping on the bamboo floor with my host mom and sisters. The next day, we went on a hike so they could show me where they fetch water everyday. It is so interesting in a time like today that people chose to live this old fashioned life, where they could easily move down to where the rest of the family live with cell signal, electricity (most of the time) and running water. It was all really cool, and besides the many Cebuano “Marry Me” jokes, I felt like part of the family. I was also surprised at the Cebuano that I can actually speak, and I love it that I can play the card game, Tung-Its, with the men and win. It was also so nice to have a mini adventure even with no electricity and the only thing to do was hand-wash all of my super smelly laundry, which I inevitably had to do the next day, but host mom and sissies all helped, they really are the sweetest. So, now it is on with the next 2 weeks of school before Christmas Break, likely being without power the whole time. It will be a stressful and sweaty time, but well worth it for the love I feel from my host family here and from Daniel across the seas. The big reward for all of this hard work will be Christmas party at school, then Bohol with Daniel for tarsiers and pristine white sand beaches, then New Years Even with all of my favorite Peace Corps friends in my very own city next door of Dumaguete. Definitely still taking the bad with the good, but still trying to make a small difference each day, since I am being so changed for the better by my students and really everyone I care about here in the Philippines. Typhoons, blackouts, earthquakes, phone text/calling mishaps, mysteries, and all, I couldn’t think of having it any other way.